|
|
Whistle Stopper - Growing Pains
|
List Price: $13.98
Our Price: $5.99
Your Save: $ 7.99 ( 57% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Geffen Records
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0602517520301
Label: Geffen Records
Manufacturer: Geffen Records
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Geffen Records
Release Date: 2007-12-18
Studio: Geffen Records
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Horrible!!!
Comment: This has to be the worst album Mary has ever made. I listened to it 1 time then gave it away. What a waste of money
Customer Rating:
Summary: the break what!
Comment: if music is about the collaboration of the soul and the beat, mary j. blige's " Growing Pains" is a prime example. on her eighth album, mary blends the rawness of hip hop, smooth r and b, and even ventures to soft rock to emphasize different emotions. for example, "smoke" a song about the insecurities one has in a relationship, is midtempo soft rock ballad that compliments her hesistant but strong voice. " just fine", the lead single from the album, is a one on one therapy session with a life coach that makes you feel good because she's good...fine. with a micheal jaxckson's off the wall feel, you cant help but to get up and celebrate life for what it is. on the other hand, when mary is pissed, we know to run for the boarder with tracks like "roses". however, the track that stands out is " till the morning" which i personally think should be the next single with its tribe called quest inspired beat. overall, " Growing Pains" is the standard for r and b albums for 2008 because it blends , expresses every emotion of love, tries different genres of music and is the truth. beyonce take note!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A healed Mary
Comment: Mary J. Blige said on VH1's Storytellers that most people were saying they don't like her music now that she's happy. My friends and me have been having this discussion since after "No More Drama" was released and news of Mary's happiness and marriage and salvation had made news all over.
I am the rare person who loves to see another person rise, even an artist. I know artists are supposed to suffer to create good art, but Mary did that in the early to mid-90s -- now she's grown up. I love "Grown Woman" with Missy Elliott and Ludacris, it's a great summer single; "Roses" answers those who think that a happy life is unfettered by drama; "Stay Down" is inspirational love music for those who are not sure whether they're going to stick with that relationship. There's something for everyone on this album, if you can stand Mary's maturity.
Customer Rating:
Summary: MJB: Never a disappointment.
Comment: I'm very late on this review, but I love the newest installment. It's great. Don't hesitate to purchase it. Every song on the CD is excellent, and representative of Mary's versatility. She is a true songstress.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Growing painful to listen to
Comment: I'm a huge fan of Mary J. Blige. I've been a fan more or less from the moment What's the 411? dropped back in '92. I've bought every single album she released since, including the live and remix albums but excluding 2003's Love & Life, right up to The Breakthrough. I didn't get Reflections - A Retrospective but that was because I just didn't see the point (I had practically everything on it already) and not because I didn't like it.
But I seem to be the only one on the planet who just can't get into this one. I simply don't get it. Mary has been selling millions of albums across the world for 16 years now and that could explain why, to these ears, she's beginning to sound a bit weary. She's been telling us all how she's incredibly happy now, how her life is exactly where she wants it to be and how, whilst going through all the pain in her recent past, one thing she's always strived to do is keep things real with her fans. This might all well be true but I'm yet to see Mary actually LOOKING happy in an interview or a video. (Jill Scott always looks happy for instance, even these days - and she's just been through a divorce!).
But maybe that's just Mary's way. Maybe it's the 'street' or 'ghetto fabulous' thing to; to never smile even if feeling blissful. Her continuous banging on about said bliss is starting to grate on the nerves a tad though. She's a strong woman, no doubt, and a trooper. She does "keep on going", as one reviewer said but at what cost? Like I said, the poor woman is probably just really tired.
When she burst onto the scene back in 1992 with songs like "Real Love", "Reminisce" and "Love No Limit", she showed energy, versatility and raw emotion that have long since dissipated. The bittersweet "Be Happy" and the poignant "I'm Goin' Down from her sophomore album My Life proved she was no one-hit wonder. And let's not forget her star turns on hip-hop classics like "Can't Knock The Hustle" with Jay-Z (1996) and "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By" with Method Man (1995). I for one thought the title "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" was absolutely well deserved.
But every subsequent album has been less satisfying, and more geared towards what was playing on the radio than the one that preceded it. By the time "The Breakthrough" came out, I was starting to lose interest. It was clear to any objective listener that Mary was just treading water and I've barely played the CD three times since I got it. This one I simply couldn't bear and had to take right back to the store and ask for something else.
As soon as I saw the video to her single "Just Fine", I had my doubts. The Michael Jackson homage-paying intro (and the video itself) was probably well intentioned but to me, they just fell flat. It just doesn't sound or look like she really means it. She's singing about being uplifted but she sounds (and looks) anything but. Jackson looked ecstatic in the video to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" but to me, Mary looks like she'd rather be somewhere else, doing something else. It's not so much in her moves, it's in her eyes and her facial expressions.
The female empowerment of "Grown Woman" and "Feel Like A Woman" sound like the kind of thing that would play well to Oprah's studio audience but this listener just couldn't find the groove - and I'm no chauvinist. It would take too long to list the female empowerment tunes I've grooved to in my time.
Pharrell's multi-tempoed "'Til The Morning" and Ne-Yo's interestingly winding "Smoke" are probably the only two songs on here that break away from the made-for-radio formula that dominates the album and Mary is probably singing the best she's ever sung - much more control, much less excess - but somehow for me, that just makes her less interesting to listen to. A perfect example of what I mean is the solemn "Fade Away". Forget all the almost spiritual wailing and chest beating of the good old days, Mary sounds like she's barely breaking a sweat.
Maybe that's how music is now in the 21st century and I need to either get with the program or leave it alone. Or maybe, just maybe, as listeners, we've allowed our standards to drop to basement level and as a result, anything even slightly passable is lauded as the next best thing. Mary is undoubtedly one of the legends of our time and I'll never even try to take that away from her but I do wonder if the way many of us fans are almost deifying the woman these days, is blinding us to the fact that her music is simply not as good as it used to be. I realise that we're living in an age where creativity and individuality are not rewarded and where studio executives and radio programmers are now telling artistes what kind of music to make so it's entirely possible that Mary's heart isn't really in the music she's putting out, despite all her talk of the contrary. Whatever. In the end, we'll only get the quality of music that we as consumers demand.
Maybe Mary's new life is indeed the happy and peaceful one she says it is. All I know is that while it must be a good thing (especially for her) that all the pain is behind her and all the angst gone, her supposedly newly-found joy is not coming through in the music quite yet. To me, singing songs of empowerment and bliss while looking and sounding utterly miserable just makes Mary painful to watch - and to listen to.
The album will probably still sell truckloads and earn her all kinds of awards, so I know my view is the minority one. I also know that my review is very likely to be unpopular here but I had to say my piece. I didn't want to post the review but a good Amazon buddy of mine (who will remain nameless) encouraged me to do so, so here it is. Let the hissing, booing and clicking on the "no" button begin.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
"I'm talkin' 'bout things I know," Mary J. Blige wails on "Work That," the second single and opening track of Growing Pains. The album squeaked into 2007 too late to make best-of lists but otherwise would have stormed its way up several, for sure. She needn't have hit us with such a pronouncement: In 16 songs that ring as remarkably, unflinchingly true as those on 2005's landmark The Breakthrough, the queen of hip-hop soul keeps "keeping it real" a specialty. There's no sense in trying to assign credit for the skin-tight grooves and funked-up retro vibe here; with nine producers padding Blige's emotion-rich voice and the lyrics she so obviously lives by, what we're left with is a melange of sounds. But it's a measure of an artist who has mastered her own identity and left nothing to chance that this, her eighth studio album, comes off so free of wild cards and loose edges. "You ask what love feels like," she sings on "What Love Is," one of the disc's less fierce tracks. "It feels like joy, and it feels like pain, and it feels like sunshine, and it feels like rain," she continues, answering the question. The album feels the same way, a passel of complex feelings all wrapped up in love. No one knows struggle, heartache, and triumph over mediocrity like Blige. --Tammy La Gorce
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
